


We Were Like Rock & Roll

by Operamatic



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe, Battle of the Bands, F/M, Rock Band AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 07:49:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6321091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Operamatic/pseuds/Operamatic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Get ready everyone! This is a Bastille Day you’ll never forget, bigger than the first, better than the rest. Here they are, MY favorite duo this side of the Atlantic! ONSTAGE FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, LEMME HEAR YOU SCREAM FOR MIRACULOUS!!!!!”</p><p>Rock Band AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Were Like Rock & Roll

“Give it up, give it up folks! That was the twisted stylings of A.KU.MA, let ‘em hear ya!”

A roar goes up from the bowels of the club, screaming and stomping its way through the comfortable darkness of the backstage to settle like a stone in Adrien’s gut.

The band in question is retreating towards the green room, a monstrous heavy metal conglomerate somehow made up of a handful of raucously-dressed teenagers, a middle aged man in a cyborg suit, and most confusingly, a five year old girl. One of the members shoots him a sneer. They aren’t even bothering to stay and hear the set following them.

“Hooo, that’s gonna be a tough act to beat!” The MC quips to the crowd with all-too familiar glee.  Adrien huffs, trying to swallow down his annoyance. Nino was a natural showman, but couldn’t he at least show some loyalty?

“I think I babysat that kid once,” a voice to his left cuts through the prickling buzz of Adrien’s nerves. Ladybug stands tall, all five feet of her, hands on her hips, mask firmly in place, and a bemused pout on her lips. Adrien tries his best not to linger on that last detail, but it’s hard not to when she’s done them up in matte black lipstick.

“You obviously aren’t the best disciplinarian, then, she’s a nightmare.” He rolls onto his shoulder, leaning heavily against the concrete of the wall behind them. “Maybe you didn’t sit on her long enough.”  

In any other place, on any other night, he’d have reigned in his words, bit down his smirk with measured politeness. But with the flashing neon of the club’s lights playing across her smooth skin, soaking up into the supple red leather of her jacket, Adrien feels like he might as well be another person, living a different, far more interesting life. So the smirk stays, and his joke makes her roll her eyes so hard it was a wonder the mask doesn’t get knocked off from sheer force.

“It’s a battle of the bands, not an open mic, Chat Noir.” She reaches up to flick his nose and he snickers, running a hand along the seam of his own black mask where it meets his skin.

 

* * *

 

 The masks had been her idea.  It had seemed like such a gimmick when he first read the flyer, tacked up on a bulletin board near his university: 

WANTED:

BASSIST FOR BATTLE OF THE BANDS (7/14 - 11 ARR - Club L’International)

ROCK GUITARIST/SINGER SEEKING COLLABORATOR, MULTIPLE INSTRUMENTS ENCOURAGED.  

(Identities Will Remain Anonymous - Mask Required)

Beneath was some clipart of a domino mask surrounded by some awkwardly rendered lightning bolts, and below that were an untouched row of tear-away stubs with a single phone number on them.

Adrien isn’t sure what about the poster arrested him so.  It was crude and obviously copied on cheap printer printer, and just vague enough that no one seemed the least bit interested.  But he’d torn down the entire flyer, stubs and all, presumably to keep anyone else from calling the number, and it wasn’t until he was halfway home that he realized how insane that looked.

“How’d you get this number?” A steady, feminine voice had answered almost immediately after he’d dialed.

“I...uh…y-you’re looking for a bassist?” He stammered, suddenly afraid this whole thing had been a mistake. There was some whispering on the other end of the line, then some kind of rattling noise, as though someone had tried to take the phone away, then the muffled sounds of someone else’s voice.

“- _Alya no! I told you-”_

“YES you saw my flyer!” The voice chirped back on the line, suddenly syrupy sweet where earlier it had been sharp as nails, “So you’re interested in _La Bataille de Popincourt_?”

“I...I mean I’m interested in playing more…modern music. M-maybe branching out a bit.”

“You play other instruments?” The girl shot back quickly, while more muffled rustling and a shriek continued behind her.  Adrien suddenly got the feeling he was being placed under a very exacting microscope.

“Uh...Twelve years classical piano, eight years violin. The uh...the bass is more recent, I’m looking to get more experience.” He’d scratched the back of his neck, though he knew the speaker couldn’t see this. He eyes flitted to the closet where his electric bass lay nestled behind a shoe rack. He’d made sure to hide it well. If his father ever found out...well, he didn’t like to think of what might happen.

He’d already seen enough things he’d loved disappear without a trace.

There was murmuring on the other end of the line. Someone said the word _no_ . Some frantic whispering. Then the same person, also presumably a girl, said _Ask him-_

“Ask him yourself, girl!” And Adrien got the distinct impression he was being handed off.

“Um…” the second voice started. It was a nice voice, from what he could tell, clear and bright, if not a bit breathy at the moment. “I...that is...thank you for uh...your interest-”

“Y-you’re welcome,” he blurted out, followed by a loud smack to his head.

“I just wanted to ask...that is...what...what kind of bass is it?”

Adrien didn’t miss a beat.

“1974 Rickenbacker Plagg.”

Silence.  
  
Then, suddenly:

“ _With the green frets?!”_

Something deep inside Adrien’s chest unfurled like a song. Like a string that’s been strummed and allowed to ring out into space, only to hear the next note come back through the dark in counterpoint.

“YES, mint condition!”

“Oh. My. God.”

There was a shout. Followed by more shouting. Adrien was fairly certain he heard the words _paydirt, girl!_ before the line was forcibly stolen back by the first speaker.

“You’re hired, kid.”

What had followed was a mad dash to acquire what the woman on the other end, their _manager_ apparently, considered “Appropriate Attire”.

Adrien arrived at their first practice with his hair carefully mussed, wearing more black leather than he’d ever seen in his _life_. Even Jagged Stone had a little variety in his wardrobe, but the guidelines had been uncomfortably specific.

“I see you found the boots I recommended,” the woman (who was no older than him, he discovered) had said when they met face to face. She jutted out a hand, taking his in a firm grip, “Alya Cesaire, I’m gonna make you a superstar.”

“I’m just looking to play with someone good,” he shrugged, lowering his case to the floor and unlatching the lid.

“Oh my girl’s better than good, kiddo.” Alya shifted to the side, revealing a dark-haired girl sitting atop a massive speaker, ankles delicately crossed. She wore a red and black polka-dotted mask across her eyes, and cradled in her hands was a red cherrywood Gibson Les Paul that made Adrien want to weep. She carefully twisted a mother-of-pearl tuning peg and strummed out an E, eyes closed as she tilted her head towards the sound, lips a tightly drawn line across the planes of her pretty face. Adrien swallowed hard.

“Is that-”

“Alright you two, have fun!” Alya waved, phone in hand, from the door. Adrien whipped around in a panic.

“You’re not staying?!”

“Places to go, people to schmooze, kiddo! Superstar rock duos don’t manage themselves!” She winked and scuttled out the door faster than Adrien could blink. He turned back to the girl with the Gibson, suddenly very aware of the way his own mask weighed atop his skin, which against his better judgement was flushing at the notion of being alone with her.

She hadn’t stopped tuning. Any attempts on Adrien’s part to say hello were aborted with each meticulous twist of a tuning peg, each careful fingering of a string. Finally, satisfied with what she heard, the girl lifted her head to him, and opened her eyes.

“Hi,” she said, tucking a loose strand of black hair behind her ear.

“Hi,” he replied.

“You’re my bassist?”

“I’m all yours-” he murmured before choking and attempting to backtrack, “-for the next two hours!”

“Great!” She smiled, almost apologetically, though Adrien couldn’t imagine why, “Thanks again, I uh...I nearly gave up on this.”

“This, being?” He sidled up towards her, thumbs hooking into his belt loops in a way he hoped looked nonchalant.

“The whole band thing. Especially for the competition in Popincourt, it’s so soon.”

“We have three months!” He laughed. It faltered slightly when he saw her expression.

“I-” she bit her lip, “I don’t like to lose. Three months isn’t a lot of time to build a battle-winning band. You and I, we’ve got to be really good. We’ve got to be better than everyone else entering. And I’m not sure I-” she paused.

Adrien took in the furrow of her brow. The way her gaze extended past the high windows of the gymnasium in which they stood, beyond to somewhere or someone he didn’t know  He took in the way her mask made her eyes an icy kind of blue, and the way the muscles in her throat worked that inevitably made him think things he’d never once thought about doing to someone’s neck before.

“You can trust me,” he said, shocked at the steadiness in his own voice. He took a risk, and laid his hands on her shoulders. “I promise. I won’t let you down.”

She looked up at him, really meeting his eyes for the first time. Her lips parted and then split into a soft smile. “It’s not _you_ I’m worried about, Mr. Fifteen-Years Piano!”

“ _Twelve,_ ” he corrected, poking her mask between where he could only assume her eyebrows lay, “and the name’s Chat Noir, not Mr. Made-Up-Facts About My Piano Training.”

“Chat Noir? _Really_?” She quirked her mouth a little, roving her eyes up and down his ensemble in a way that didn’t at all make him hot under his collar. “Isn’t that a little...on the nose?” She gestured to the green tinted lenses built into his mask, the studded collar around his neck.

“Oh and what are you supposed to be?” He smiled like a goon. “Princess Polka Dot?”

She sighed at this, biting back a smile. “Ladybug.”

“Ladybug…?”

“Just Ladybug,” she said firmly.

“Why do you get to be the one with good luck?” He faked a pout.  

Amid all their cheeky ribbing and posturing and total lack of actual practicing, Adrien found a moment to take stock of the fact that he had, never in his life, spoken to someone like this.  Even his friend Nino, who months later he’d discover actually _worked_ at L’International, had never been privy to the running commentary of sass and banter that Adrien stifled on an hourly basis.

Good students didn’t make bad jokes about their teacher who was unfortunately named M. Péter. Good models didn’t smoke cigarettes with the stylists between takes. Good sons didn’t talk back to their emotionally-negligent fathers. Good musicians didn’t nearly attempt to smash their violins when their mother leaves home without any explanation or warning.

And maybe it was the mask, or the leather, or the uncannily intoxicating smell of Ladybug’s pristine Gibson Les Paul that made Chat Noir say the things Adrien would never dream of voicing, to wear a smile two degrees wider than Adrien’s face had ever expressed.

He’d asked her a question, he realized, as she chuckled and pushed him back with a single finger to his chest.

_Why do you get to be the one with good luck?_

“Hey, you chose the name Chat Noir.  And besides…” she flipped her hair over one ear, and perhaps she was trying to be ironic but instead the effect made Adrien’s stomach flip inside out, “I’m not lucky. I just happen to be the best.”

 

* * *

 

All April they’d practiced. They drilled set lists and picked apart chord progressions. Every session they played their fingers raw, coming back two days later with callouses that they boasted about proudly. After a particularly good jam she’d offer out her fist to him, which he’d bump gleefully, the sensation never getting old. During that first month she rarely opened her mouth to sing, but Adrien could hardly complain. They were focusing on their accompaniment, polishing their shared technique. Showmanship could come later, right now they needed precision.

They found a rhythm, and found out that against all odds they had a lot in common. It turned out she loved Jagged Stone as much as he did, if not more. (“I saw him in concert when I was fifteen.” “HOW DARE YOU TELL ME THAT!”) In return she drilled him on his combo moves in Mecha Strike IV. (“Of course you’d button mash until you got Matouken, so juvenile.” “And yet my high score says otherwise, My Lady.”)

She’d also cooed over his Plagg, and chortled every time he tried to plug in and the four-decades old electric pickups decided to shock him.

“He likes you!” she giggled. 

“He _hates_ me,” he shot back, eyeing her gentle grip on the neck of her guitar, “And I wish you gave me half as much sympathy as you gave that Gibson.”

“Tikki is special, she’s my soulmate.” Ladybug laid a kiss against the black embossed label on the guitar’s head. “She’s been with me through everything.”

“You named her Tikki?” He tried and failed to contain the fondness in his voice. “That’s adorable.” She stuck her tongue out at that.

“No, it’s badass and punk rock and so am I! Now let’s run through that bridge again.”

In May he got to practice early to find she’d locked herself in the bathroom.

“Ladybug?” He’d tapped gently against the glass. He heard a curse from inside. “Are you alright?”

“I-I just-” she stammered. Her voice sounded...different. Lighter, frantic, less supported. Like her lungs were squeezed shut and her heart had been replaced with that of a hummingbird’s.

“Do you need me to call an ambulance?” He bit his lip, scared he’d only exacerbate things.

“It’s th-this _damn_ mask,” she countered back. “The elastic b-b-broke.”

He didn’t know what to say to that.

“I could help you fix it-”

“NO, GO AWAY!”

Fifteen minutes later she came out to find him seated up against one of their amps, plucking out video game themes on his bass.

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you alright?” He turned to her. She looked so small, arms folded and hands tucked into her sides.

“I...I haven’t been honest with you.” She swallowed hard.

“About what?” Adrien couldn’t imagine anything in the world that could take the tiny dynamo that he knew to be Ladybug, and strip her down to her most vulnerable parts.

“I’m...there’s a reason I wear the mask. I can’t go onstage without it.”

“Is it like stage fright?” Adrien tried his best to sound open, understanding. He didn’t have to imagine stage fright, he remembered all too well the tingling panic that overtook his body when he was eight and had to present his father’s juniors line to a boardroom of investors. That he hadn’t vomited all over the clothes had been a miracle.

“Yes...no...it’s not...just that…” she wheezed out instead, bringing him back to the moment, the room, her hunched stance.

“I _need_ to win this battle of the bands,” she sat atop the amp, not looking at him but close enough that her wrist brushed his temple. He focused on her voice instead. “I need us to win, and I can’t let anyone know who I am under...under the mask because if I do...If I win under my own name then they’ll find out I’m underage, and I can’t collect the winnings.”

Adrien’s mouth hung open a moment before snapping shut.  She couldn’t be much younger than him, but then again he’d only turned eighteen this spring. He hadn’t even realized there was prize money. He hadn’t even bothered checking the requirements for the battle, he’d been so focused on simply getting to play at all.

“Is it a lot?” he asked, mentally kicking himself.

“Enough to save my parents’ shop.” 

If his heart was a dam it would have burst. He fought back every urge to grab her hand, pull her down to face him, pledge her every cent of his trust fund. He fought it back because he knew to do so would insult her. She’d never ask it of him, never accept it if he offered.

So instead he carefully set his bass aside, hauled himself to standing, and put out a hand to her.

She regarded it carefully, raising her own just slightly, before letting it settled against the collar of her shirt.

“What’s this?” she asked, wary.

“A promise,” he said, wiggling his fingers for emphasis. “I promise you that we will trounce every other band there. Not just because you’re the best guitarist in all Paris, but also because I’m your partner, and I won’t let you down.”

She took his hand tentatively, fingers loose around his palm.

“Even though you have to wear a mask?” She winced a little at this.

“Hey, you’re not the only one with a secret identity. Believe it or not, I took this gig _because_ of the masks.” Partially true, he conceded. Perhaps more true than he cared to admit.

“O-oh.” She was taken aback by that  Then a smirk played on her lips, infectious enough that Adrien felt himself mirroring the expression back to her. “So you’re saying the amazing Chat Noir has secrets he needs to hide?”

“Only because my dashing good looks would blind everyone in the audience,” he winked.

A groan escaped her mouth and there was his Ladybug again, grinning and carefree.

“Partners?” He bounced their joined hands up and down.

“Partners.” She tightened her grip, iron hard and sure as stars.

She shoved off the amp, moving to plug in Tikki and launch into their opener. But before she shrugged the strap over her shoulders, before he’d had a chance to bend down and pick up Plagg, she strode over and hugged him. It was quick, and quiet, and he barely had a chance to breathe before she knuckled him on the shoulder and moved away.

“Thank you, Chat.”

 

* * *

 

“Chat? _Chat!”_ Ladybug hisses and tugs on his ear. 

“BLUH!” He yelps and finds himself dragged down to her eye level.

“They just gave us our cue, we’re on next.” She glares at him, not unkindly. He can see the gears working behind her mask, running through lead sheets and lyrics at light speed.

“Got it.” He stretches, letting the bones in his neck crack. He chances a glance back down at her. She’s sucking on the knuckle of her index finger, teeth worrying little grooves into the skin.

He takes her hand in his.

“Hey, stop that,” he whispers, leaning down so their foreheads are almost touching. In the gloom of backstage it’s hard to tell, but he secretly hopes that tint on her cheeks is a blush and not just the stage lights. In a reverent hush, he says, “You ready?”

For a split second she looks like she might falter, big blue eyes flitting between his own, down to their hands, out to the stage and back again. Then she sucks up what seems like all the air in the room through her nose, holds it there. She blows it out in a huff and suddenly she’s gripping his hand again just like she did two months ago.

Iron hard.

“Let’s blow their minds.”

 Sure as stars.

“Get ready everyone!” Nino croons as they strap on their guitars and take their spots in the wing, “This is a Bastille Day you’ll never forget, bigger than the first, better than the rest. Here they are, MY favorite duo this side of the Atlantic-”

 God bless Nino.

 “-ONSTAGE FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, LEMME HEAR YOU SCREAM FOR _MIRACULOUS!!!!!_ ”

They strut out and Adrien has never seen such a crowd. A churning mass of electricity and  body heat, all directed at him and Ladybug. His jaw clamps shut as he plugs in, his eyes so preoccupied scanning the crowd that he doesn’t feel Plagg’s usual sting. 

Ladybug stands up front, casually adjusting the mic which the last band hadn’t bothered to lower. Tikki is slung over her back. He can’t see her face. She gives him the count and he readies his foot on the pedal of the drum machine.

“Hey Paris!” she rumbles into the mic. Her voice washes over him, the crowd, the world. “Who’s ready to rock?”

He slams his foot down and the beat starts. He plucks out the bassline, eyes on Ladybug as she begins to bob with the rhythm he sets for her. She opens her mouth and suddenly he’s not even sure what words come out but it fills him up like hot molten fire and there’s no more gravity in the room.

The lyrics are hers. He hasn’t heard them like this before, not really. She handed him a lead sheet months ago and it all seemed so straightforward then, copacetic and clean in her tight handwriting.

What washes over the crowd (and by dint of proximity, Adrien) isn’t clean at all. It’s throaty and agonizing, it’s exhilarating. It’s pure energy harnessed and funneled through the tiny masked woman standing in front of him, light glinting off the red of her jacket, the black of her boots, the glorious curve of her guitar as she swings it over her shoulder and starts a frenzied countermelody to his bass.

This is why they had to practice everyday, he thinks, fingers aching even through the callouses.  How could he have ever been prepared for this otherwise, when all he’s had is just the two of them playing at half volume in an empty gymnasium, her mouthing along to words while he keeps time. There was a reason he ran through those patterns every night, why he could count out their tempo changes as easy as counting to ten.

When you combine time and attention, rigor and ambition, the resulting effect is indistinguishable from magic.

Which is why Adrien doesn’t have an apoplexy when Ladybug slings Tikki back over her shoulders, grabs the mic stand and swings it under her, singing full force into the microphone while she bends double.

He keeps playing through their song, even though his eyes can’t tear away from the arching slope of her neck, or the way the lights all around them reflect off her sweat, her teeth, her hair, to form a halo around her so white hot that he sees it burned into the backs of his eyelids.

His fingers don’t even stutter when she glances over her shoulder at him, pupils dilated so tight that he feels he could fall straight into that unbroken blue. Ladybug turns back to the crowd, which is by all appearances losing their minds, and rips out a riff on Tikki that Adrien thinks could split atoms if she wanted it to.

He follows her. He’d follow her anywhere. They play together with the same intention and it’s so staggeringly _easy_. Like falling into step on the street. Like holding someone’s hand and realizing it’s a perfect fit. They’ve done this before, played this scale before, followed this beat before.  But it’s like new. It’s every first time all wrapped into one.

And suddenly it’s done. Ladybug’s letting the final chord ring out. The drumbeat is gone. All that echoes through the mic is her ragged breath. She lowers her hand, fingers tight and bloodless around the guitar pick. Slowly, tremblingly, she turns her gaze to him, and catches his eyes. 

“Thank you,” she rasps.

The audience explodes.

Amid the raucous cheers, the shrieking, the literal items of clothing being thrown onstage, Adrien finds enough presence of mind to smile and nod. He can barely rip his eyes away from hers, and he wonders against all rational thought if that look on her face couldn’t be the mirror image of what his heart is feeling.

He walks to front of the stage, leaning over her shoulder, carefully taking the mic in one hand.

“We’re Miraculous,” he manages to say over a few choice screams from the audience, putting on what he hopes is a charming grin. “If you liked us, please vote for us.”

The overwhelming response from the audience tells him what the final decision will be.

They’re ushered politely offstage, Nino throwing his arms over both of them and squealing like a piglet. He’s babbling something about the club, mentioning he gets pick of bands on Tuesdays and would they want to do a full show sometime soon?

Adrien knows he should be listening, should be reacting with more enthusiasm, but he can only focus on the hazy look Ladybug’s giving him and sudden unfathomable heaviness in his arms.

“Sounds great, Nino.” He pats his friend on the shoulder, pulling a card out of his back pocket. “Here’s our manager’s number, give her a call yeah?”

“Oh yeah, sure man! Sounds good!” Nino waves, moving back towards the stage, shooting him a couple finger guns. And suddenly it’s just Adrien and Ladybug backstage, the sounds of the club somehow muted by their shared fatigue.

He extends a fist.

 _“Bien joué_ ,” he manages.

She raises her hand. Taps his knuckles with her own and leaves them there. Stares down at them, blinking, as though it were some strange ritual she’d never seen before.

Then Ladybug reaches out, cinches her fingers around his wrist, and pulls him toward her.  One, two, three steps and suddenly she’s fitting herself into the circle of his arms, tugging him down with one hand and pushing a thumb up under his mask.

When she kisses him it’s like getting shocked by his bass but in the lips, the heart, the pit of his gut. She mashes her mouth up against his artlessly and he doesn’t even care because she’s slipped his mask off and he can feel the tips of her eyelashes fluttering at the soft skin under his eye. When she gasps for air it’s like every other noise in the room has winked out of existence.

Their noses bump and he dives in again, his arms tightening around her waist, lifting her up. She wraps herself around him and runs her nails along his scalp. He mumbles things into her skin and she lays small pecks in the hollows of his eyelids, and they laugh and breathe and shake. And they kiss. And kiss. And kiss.

“I think we did good out there,” he smiles bashfully, shifting her in his arms.

“Hmm, could be better.” She places a finger to her lips, an exaggerated expression of detachment playing under her mask. She hasn’t taken it off yet, and he won’t ask her to. When she’s ready, when it’s time. (When she’s not performing illegally underage in a nightclub.)

“Such a tough critic! Any suggestions, My Lady?” He quirks an eyebrow and smirks. It only grows more cheeky when she runs her finger along his bottom lip. He nips at it and she makes a noise low in her throat.

“Well, for starters, when am I gonna get you to sing a duet with me?”

Somewhere beyond backstage the DJ places a spindle on a record. A kickdrum flares into life, followed by a trumpet, and a cheer goes up. Lights flash, drinks spill, the world spins on.

Ladybug leans back and smiles, laughter bubbling up from within. She threads her fingers behind his neck and he grips tighter on her thighs.  

Through the din, just before he captures her lips again with his, he hears her shout:

“I love this song!"

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Miraculous Ladybug fic! Thank you for reading it!  
> A million thanks to @ehmazing for beta-ing this.
> 
> The song's title comes from Janelle Monae's song of the same name. I suggest you listen to it, because it's amaaaaazing.
> 
> Tikki the Guitar is based off my real Gibson Les Paul, Rosie (Unfortunately there's no such thing as a Rickenbacker Plagg). L'International is also a real club known for featuring new Parisian bands.
> 
> I definitely plan on writing more ML fic, and you can follow me on miraculousandgrand.tumblr.com


End file.
